New Search Engine Takes "Dyve" Into the Dark Web 55
CWmike writes "DeepDyve has launched its free search engine that can be used to access databases, scholarly journals, unstructured information and other data sources in the so-called 'Deep Web' or 'Dark Web,' where traditional search technologies don't work. The company partnered with owners of private technical publications, databases, scholarly publications and unstructured data to gain access to content overlooked by other engines. Google said earlier this month that it was adding the ability to search PDF documents. In April, Google said it was investigating how to index HTML forms such as drop-down boxes and select menus, another part of the Dark Web."
Pay walls (Score:5, Informative)
The company partnered with owners of private technical publications, databases, scholarly publications and unstructured data to gain access to content overlooked by other engines.
I know why the other engines don't index these documents: they're behind pay walls. As the second link points out, Google already indexes (some) PDFs, but that doesn't help if the site doesn't want me to see the PDF. There are lot of topics, such as disability rehabilitation and linguistics, that I can't search for without Google returning a bunch of results from sites that require a subscription but to which my county library [acpl.info] doesn't subscribe. (A tip-off for these results is that "Cached" doesn't show up.)
Re:Pay walls (Score:5, Informative)
It appears this website ITSELF requires a subscription, the "beta" is free, the "pro" is not. Signing up for the beta will get you a registration page, followed by this helpful message:
"Due to the wonderful interest that we have received, we will be sending out your username and password next week.
We hope you enjoy using DeepDyve, the research engine for the Deep Web!"
Not impressed so far that they can't let me use the search for a week unless I pay them money. Don't fall for this scam.
Re:This means more spam (Score:3, Informative)
This will certainly defeat the practice of obfuscating links with e-mail addresses in them, by using a picture link or "click here."
"Click here" still works: use a web form to send e-mail instead of disclosing an e-mail address that doesn't use a whitelist. And AFB has reported that a picture of an address doesn't work even for legitimate users of speech or braille browsers.
Google starts indexing scanned (!) PDFs (Score:5, Informative)
The summary is a bit misleading. Google has been indexing the textual parts of PDFs for a long time. According to the article they have now started indexing scans inside of PDF files, which requires OCR.
Google has been doing that for catalogs [google.com] for a while now, but OCRing large numbers of scans obviously requires a lot more resources.
Re:so... (Score:1, Informative)
created an account,.....as long as they return results a bit faster than getting you your user name and password to you.
Thank you for your registration.
Due to the wonderful interest that we have received, we will be sending out your username and password next week.
We hope you enjoy using DeepDyve, the research engine for the Deep Web!